Q2 - Some political thinkers hope

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The gap in the reasoning on this one is fairly straightforward. The main difficulty in this one is potentially misidentifying the conclusion. The second sentence is the conclusion of the argument _ that to form a government in which every citizens right’s are respected is impossible. The evidence for this is that any government will be controlled by laws, and that as such, some people will have a greater share of political power. This argument assumes that if some people have a greater share of political power than others, then not everyone’s rights will be respected. This is best expressed in answer choice (D).

(A) is the closest incorrect answer choice. If answer choice (A) were true, the argument in the stimulus would be justified. The problem with this answer choice is that it is not an assumption required for the conclusion to be true. It is not required that a majority of peoples’ rights will be violated. But it is required that at least some will have their rights violated.
(B) Is irrelevant. There is no assumption that people are ignorant of laws.
(C) Is not necessary to the argument. Even if all of the laws could be misinterpreted, unequal distribution of power is only all the more likely to result.
(D) Fills the gap well, but not so well that it’s more than what is required.
(E) Is not relevant. The assumption isn’t that those who have greater political power will use it to get more political power, it’s that they’ll use it to violate some people’s rights.

[lisahollchang]

I struggled between choosing A and D on this one, a struggle I didn't expect to have on the second question of an LR section. You're right in stating that A goes too far - and that it is sufficient to draw the conclusion but not necessary. This is a good question I believe to see the difference between the two.

[samuelfbaron]

For so early on in the section, I struggled with this one. I thought it was a rather difficult question to place in the first 10 questions.

I solved this one by process of elimination.

Just to clarify -

Is the conclusion "it's impossible to form a government where every's citizens rights are respected" = "somebody's rights are violated" as choice (D) states?

I think that's why I struggled with this one. I understand the assumption being made. But how is it we are jumping from lack of respect for rights to a violation? Violation seems quite strong to me.

[schmid215]

It's important to bear in mind that it's not out of the ordinary for one of the first few questions, or any one of the first ten, for that matter, to be difficult. They're easier on average, but some will be challenging. As for this question specifically, it seems to be of above-average difficulty. I think a pretty good measure of this is the number of thread views. There were 732 for this one, which is probably above the median for a test from the 40's or higher that has been out as a PT for a while. I (somewhat arbitrarily, granted) pegged 1,000 views as a barrier for curve-breaker questions during my prep.

[roflcoptersoisoi]

P1: Government must be defined and controlled by laws that stipulate its limits and powers
P2: Some individuals will invariably learn to interpret these laws to gain a greater share of political power.

C: Devising a form of government in which every citizen's rights are respected is impossible

Argument takes for granted that if there is not an unequal share of power then at least one person's right's will not be respected.

(A) This is sufficient, but not necessary. We need not assume that ANY form of government that leads unequal distribution of political power will lead to the violation of the right of MAJORTY of it's citizens, we just need to know that it violates some of the citizen's rights. The operative word in this answer choice is majority, if it were replaced by "some" then this would be correct.
(B) This isn't necessary to the conclusion, and in fact weakens the the argument. If a government can ensure that the rights of it's citizens are respected by keeping them ignorant of the laws, then the author's contention that devising a form of government in which the rights of every citizen is respected is less likely to be true.

(C) Completely irrelevant. While the interpretation of the laws is mentioned, their misinterpretation is out of scope scope. The fact that some of the laws cannot be misinterpreted is not necessary to the argument and doesn't effect the argument core in any shape or form. If all of the laws could be misinterpreted the conclusion could still follow.

(D) This is very similar to (A) except here we have "somebody's" rights being violated rather than a "majority" of people's rights being violated. This needs to be true in order for the argument to be true, therefore if this was negated, it would destroy the argument.

(E) Completely irrelevant. The fact that some people that have political power use it to attain even more of it does not need to be true in order for the conclusion to be true. Presumably if they already have more political power than other citizens, then the rights of some of the latter will invariably be violated, regardless of if those that have more power endeavour to attain more of it.

Note: Don't eliminate an answer choice to a necessary assumption question just because it doesn't match the flaw/assumption you identified, usually the arguments have multiple gaps.